


It must be great fun to be mean to me

by whoistorule



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:11:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoistorule/pseuds/whoistorule
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1920's ASOIAF AU featuring the Brotherhood Without Banners</p><p>(Ships and Shae's involvement with the Brotherhood taken from the <a href="http://bloodandglory-rp.tumblr.com/">Blood & Glory RP</a>)</p><p>Warning for blood, assault, and guns</p>
            </blockquote>





	It must be great fun to be mean to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [speckleshell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speckleshell/gifts).



Veniamin saw her first; a drop of blood that glints and flashes in the carnivorous hall; something bright amidst a sea of somber black.  He himself was brown but for his pale Ruski skin.  There was no crisp black tuxedo armoring his shoulders, no clean white spats grinning from shined shoes.  A spot of dirt, that’s what he’d always been, something unclean, something messy, but for all that she shined, there was something messy about her, too.

“Who’s the... chernyy?” he asked, the bartender, homegrown whiskey choking in his throat.

The man laughed, and Veniamin could hear the pity in it for the poor Russian, the man who didn’t fit in, who never fit in.  “You have unlucky taste.  That bird’s Shae.  She belongs to the boss, so I wouldn’t even think about it.

"Shae." The name tumbled off Veniamin's lips like a whisper, like a challenge. "And who is this boss?"

"You really are new around here.  What’s your name?”

“Ben.” The lie flew easy from his lips.  Veniamin was too noticeable, too unique, too foreign.

“All right Ben, I’m Anguy.  The boss man up there, the one on the throne by the piano, that’s Beric Dondarrion.  All the territory from Delancey to the numbered streets, from the Bowery on East to the river, that belongs to him.  But he’s fixing to expand soon, everyone says so.”

Veniamin, _Ben,_ nodded, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.  It was much like Russia, even now, even after Lenin and into Stalin; big fish grasping for territory from bigger fish.

"He's not like the other bosses.  He's doing it for the people, you know.  He protects them.  That's why we," Anguy pulled the butt of his gun up from the bar just a bit, a black fin emerging from a brown sea, before lowering it again, "protect him."

"You are fools, then.  Big bosses protect no one but themselves."

"Maybe that's how you bolsheviks do it.  Beric's the equality type.  The oriental to his right, that's Thoros, he's the one Beric listens to.  Man on the ivory is Tom O'Sevens, an irish fella."

"And Shae, is she his…" Ben searched for the word in English and came up short.  "Shlyukha?" he provided, hand gestures making up for the translation.

“Shae’s no quiff, though rumor says she was one once.  She’s his all right, though.  The rest of us aren’t allowed to touch her.  But Beric's got a fiance."

"Ah." Ben pointed to the comparatively modestly dressed woman behind Beric.  "Her?"

"No that's his weapons expert.  I know you think it seems odd that a doll knows her way around weapons--"

Ben laughed.  "No.  In Russia many women know how to use weapons.  In Russia they have to.” A pause to lick the whiskey from his lips. “Where is his fiance, then?"

"Not here.  Here he's got a place for her on fifth avenue.  One of those top floor penthouses."

Ben could picture it.  Beric Dondarrion's ivory queen, pale and blonde, dressed in furs, surrounded by gleaming marble.  Bosses never brought their treasured queens to places like this.  Here was for the dirty, the bloody, the unclean.

"Well if you want an in, I suggest Thoros.  He's got a russian doll of his own, comes and goes as she pleases.  Might look fondly on a countryman."

"Thank you." Ben smiled, the dregs of his whiskey burning in his throat.  He would do no such thing, but the man had been friendly.  Helpful, even.  No need to tell him more.  No need to say that ever since he saw the dark girl in the red dress, there was no other way in for him.  None other but her.

\--

It's not until the third night he spent perched on the south end of the bar, searching for the liquor that burned his surprisingly delicate throat least, that she approached him.  He had known, even before she did, that she would be the one the Boss sent.  After all, she was the one who flit from man to man, from dance to dance, her hips moving beads and feathers like thunderstorms.  No matter the color she wore she was bright, brighter by far than the other girls that bucked about.  But like a falcon, like a hawk, she always returned to her master's gloved wrist, to whisper the room's secrets in his ear.

"C'mon lonely boy," she crooned with a dangerous smile, "you've been watching far too long.  Join me for a dance."

"I think you'll find as far as my footsteps go, I'm missing something." Ben smiled, a private joke.  His own masters had stolen a few of his toes years ago.  It was that he was missing, not just grace.

"It's a slow song." Her voice cut though the moonshine. "All you have to do is cling."

\--

"You've been watching me."

Ben nodded.  That much was obvious.

"But you've done nothing." The room turned around them, slow with the music.

"You're Russian, yes?  Are you a Bolshevik?"

Ben shook his head.  "Nyet."

"A Jew?"

"Nyet, again.  You are bad at this game."

She laughed.  "My first guess was right, was it not?" Her dress was liquid silver that slithered with her hips. "I'm-"

"Shae," he filled the gap in her sentence, stealing her name from her lips.  It was meant to unnerve her.  Instead she just laughed.

"And you're Ben.  See, we know one another already.  Why do you watch me Ben?"

"It's hard not to.  You're so..." He trailed off.  Compliments wouldn't suit her.  She's heard too many to take him seriously. "Gaudy."

"You mean gorgeous," she supplied, confusion clinging to her words.

"Nyet.  Gaudy.  Like a circus.  You're the elephant in the dress, the one they like to make walk on it's hind legs.  That's what he does, isn't it?"  Ben nods at Beric, whose eyes have followed them like the barrel of a gun. "Cracks the whip and you dance.  Pour your voice like honey in blind men's ears and wait."

She was frowning now, a crease forming in her smooth brow.  Ben sidled closer.

"In Russia we have a word for women like you.  I didn't know the American one until tonight, but then I heard the men at the bar talking, I know it now.  Do you want to know what it is?"

Her frown was dangerous now, her dress glinting silver like a naked blade. "I know," Shae said. "Do you know what they did to the last man to say it to my face."

Ben didn't know what she expected, or what she wanted.  He opened his lips, intent on rising to her challenge, but found himself kissing her instead, his teeth tearing into her lip, drawing beads of red that mix with her lipstick as rough hewn hands pull him off of her.  The music's stopped, the chatter, too.  Ben could feel his legs dragging against the concrete but all he could see was her, Shae, the column of dark and silver.  Her laugh cut across the silence, low and cruel.

Ben's head hit the pavement with a clang, his glasses flying into the street beside him, as the fuzzy figures of the bartender and piano player came in and out of focus. "I tried to warn you," he heard distantly through the fog, before the butt of Anguy's gun collided with his skull.

\--

"You know you're awfully easy to find for a man who's supposed to be a spy.  Everyone in the tenements knows the man who’s Russian, but neither a Bolshevik nor a Jew."

Ben stepped aside the door of his back room, letting Shae through.  She was back to red; this time the color of old blood, browning and spreading, but not somber, not with the ways her eyes danced, not matched with her apple slice smile.  The "apartment" that his masters' money bought him was little more than a room, with no bathroom or kitchen to speak of. Those he shared with the patrons of his all, all of whom cursed at him in bastardizations of his own home tongue; Yiddish, Polish, Ukrainian, no matter, Ben had a wealth of equally as inventive insults to spit back.

"I never said I was a spy."  Shae was on his bed now, her claws wrapped around the thin corner of his sheets; her crossed legs revealed a flash of garter through the slit of her dress.

"Tsch," Shae pursed her lips. "Prison sheets."

"What does a girl like you know of prison?"

"You don't call a woman a girl.  Doll, is what you want. Or else, bird.  Did they teach you nothing, Ben-ski?" The edges of her smile mocked him, even while the flash of thigh made his heart race.  She wanted to be a challenge, he could see that, but they were all the same, these Americans.  They thought they knew so much, but it had no depth.  Everything was blurry to them.  He was the only one who saw it clear.

"Why are you here?" He knew, of course.  Her boss sent her. Or else, she asked.  He could see her leash, even when she could not.

The zipper of her dress cut through the silence, stark and crude.  It wasn't the answer Ben was looking for, but he wasn't one to turn away gifts.  Clothing melted off her body until there was nothing he could do but go to her, his eyes drinking in each drop of her sweat dappled frame through fogged lenses in the summer’s heavy heat.  Her legs slid open against the rough of his sheets, and she grabbed him, her nose banging against his glasses.  The world flipped and Ben with it, until it was his back squeaking against the thin mattress as she rode him.

“Why do you think I’m a spy?” he tried instead, through heavy gasps, his arm throbbing from the thin belt that shackled it to his bedpost.

“My my, so many questions.  You’re no baby grand, Ben,” Shae squeezed his thin wrist through the leather; her meaning was clear.  He wasn’t like the thick thugs that guarded the doors of Beric’s hall.  “And you’re too something to be a normal citizen.  My instincts said spy.  They’re never wrong.”

“They are now.”  She laughed, her teeth biting a bruised collar into the pale skin of his neck.  But wrong she was all the same.  His true brilliance was much darker than mere observation.  Ben was a genius at death, at how to exploit it, at how to suck it out of the light, at how to leave bodies in the shadows without a trace of ever having been there.  And New York City was a graveyard already, full of nameless bodies piling up in her rivers, growing flies in her streets.  She called to him from across the sea.

 _Send me_ , he’d whispered to his masters, _send me and I’ll make us a fortune.  Send me and I’ll pay for you to recruit a thousand more fools to worship your Lord of Light, a hundred thousand.  Send me and I’ll make you a legend._

“You’re a spy, Ben, and you’re mine, now.  Say it.”  Her legs clenched around him and he gasped as she slowed.  “Say it or I’ll stop.”

“Yours,” he lied through clenched teeth.  “Yours, all yours.”

“Good.”  His release came with hers and Shae smiled against him, but her smile was light without warmth, cheer without comfort.

Red lips pressed kisses to his bruising wrists as she released him.  “Mine, and Beric’s too.  He looked into you, found your papers from Ellis Island.  No one owns you, and he means to change that.”  Beric Dondarrion was a trusting fool, then.  His papers were falsehoods, well forged falsehoods, but lies all the time.  Ben sneered as he pushed his glasses up on his nose. 

“A spy is a valuable tool,” She chattered as she re-hid behind black lace and murky brick.  “And Beric, he’s going to change Manhattan.  We’re going to take it back from the wealthy, from those who don’t know us, the children of the streets.”

It was the same lies that they told in Russia.  The same lies that they told everywhere.  “If you’re so free, knyazhna, then why are you at his beck and call?  You don’t look so free to me.  You’re just a woman, and a black one at that.”

“Knyazhna,” the word rolls clumsily off her tongue, and Ben chuckled at the effort.  “What’s that?  And women have the vote now, you know.  I can go out and dance all night and sleep all day.  There’s no one that owns me.  No one that can stop me.”

“You may have the vote, but I’ll bet my one belt that you always vote with him.”  Shae frowned, the silence growing thick and muddy between them.  “It means princess.  Knyazhna.  You’re saying it wrong.”

“Knyazhna.  Why?”

“Because you’re his.  If I’m to be his dog, you should know what you are, too.  He’ll use you till you run dry, knyazhna, slap chains on you and call it love, but you don’t sit at the high table, you don’t make the decisions.”

Shae shook her head, her sex matted curls flying loose across her shoulders.  “You don’t understand.  He’s different.  He understands us.  He’s one of us.”

“Then why is his queen locked away on a Fifth Avenue tower while you slum it in the tenements like the rest of us.” It was a guess, Ben knew, but it was a good one.  He could see from the way it clouded in her eyes.

“We’re a brotherhood.  We’re not like the other gangs.  We decide things together.”

“You’ll see, knyazhna.  They believed in brotherhood in Russia, too.”

\--

His true task was simple.  Telegrams came from Russia in code.  (He knew the code.  He _wrote_ the code.) The money they sent back to Russia, he never saw it.  After all, _they_ owned him, so the money was theirs to take.

Supplies he had in abundance.  His foster brother had been an American surgeon before he went back to work for the _Lord_ in Russia.  It was simple enough for Morgan to tell his old friends that they needed supplies back in Russia, simple enough for Ben to collect syringes and poisons in old glass bottles, each labeled with cramped, scrawling cyrillic characters; another code of Ben’s own making.

As for guns, his foster sister had contacts all over the world.  Whisper of the Widow, and he found himself with a Tommy gun in hand, ammunition sleeping soundly beneath his floorboards.

It would be simple enough to kill Beric Dondarrion, the man who presumed to hold his leash, after all it had taken Ben less than a day to find where he lived, Dondarrion and his ivory queen both, but he would see no more of _her_ , then.  Besides, Dondarrion’s name opened doors, and killing him would require explanation to his masters, who were not often kind in their displeasure.

Ben knew he was smarter than Dondarrion, than the whole city.  His wits were matched by no one.  She was the only person who even came close.

\--

Her teeth nipped at a bruise that bloomed at the base of his spine.  “What’s that?” she asked, lips drawing lines around his hips as he turned.  “I didn’t give you that.”

When he laughed, it made the bruises hurt more, but it was just like her, so arrogant to think she’s the only one whose hurts he collected.  “A man with a gold watch gave it to me uptown.  Apparently I wasn’t supposed to be on his territory.”

Shae shook her head, her long legs clenching around his waist.  “Stay away from the Lannisters, they’re nasty.  Tywin Lannister’s the worst, but his children aren’t much better.  The twins rule in tandem, and his youngest son is a mangled horror, a monster, a dwarf.  They rule everything north of Madison Square Park.  The whole of the Upper East Side.”

“I’m a spy, knyazhna, am I not?  I must go where your Daddy sends me.”

Shae shook her head, favoring his lips with a sharp kiss.  “He shouldn’t send you there.”

“Worrying about me, are you?”

“No.  I just thought he had more sense than that.”

“He has no sense at all.  He’s a fool, and you’re twice one to follow him.  Everything he whispers to you, everything he promises, it’s lies.  All of it.”

She unbraided the tie from around his throat and cracked it against his blue-veined skin.

“Does Daddy let you ride him like this?”  Ben’s reward was another sharp kiss, this one grazed his upper arm, the bruise blooming purple against the pale.

“ _Beric_ and I have never fucked.  I don’t think of him like that.”

“Should I feel special then?”

Her cold laugh sent him reeling, his release coming seconds before her own; the crack of the silk against skin keeping pace with their tandem breath.

\--

Ben supposed that being dragged before daddy for a good punishment is something most children are familiar with, but he never knew his father, and Russian orphans collected their blows from whoever was nearest to dole them out.

It was the reprimands that stung more than the barrel swinging against his chest, as he doubled over, breath gone, against the cold stone.  Far above him, Dondarrion sat, flanked by his advisors, but Shae was nowhere in sight.

“You are nothing.  You are dirt.  Russian scum I found.  I offered you salvation and you think to steal my greatest treasures from my hall.”  He nodded at one of his men, one of the beefy ones with more muscles than sense.  “Jack.”

Thick fingers lifted him up and barreled into his stomach.  Ben could taste blood at the back of his throat, it coated his teeth and tongue, coppery and familiar.  Through the haze of the beating, Ben could see himself in Dondarrion’s place.  Had he a hall like this, he’d keep his chair in the shadows, with Shae at his side.  Beneath him, perhaps, but only by a step or two.  He’d open her eyes to the world, to what men like Dondarrion really were.

“You lie to her,” Ben gasped, as he dropped to his knees, blood spitting from his lips, spraying on the ground before him.  “You think you’re saving people,” the laugh hurt his bruising ribs, but Ben forced it out all the same.  “Then what do you call this?”

“Shae’s still young, just a girl, really.  She thinks all men can be saved.  I know the truth.  I shall rise like a messiah in the tenements, and the good will flock to me, will flock to the healing light.  But you?  You are a creature of darkness.  You will flee back to the hell you came from.  You won’t see her anymore.”

“Lucifer was a creature of light, too,” he spat, and then the world went dark.

\--

“I’m no longer supposed to be seeing you,” she announced as she entered in a dress so black it seemed to suck the light from the room.  It shimmered as she moved, drawing shadows around it.   _Funeral attire_.

“Daddy’s grown tired of me already?  I’m hurt.”

“Don’t call him that.”

Ben sighed, his fingers tracing the worn path of buttons on his shirt.  “And you came to tell me this in person?”

Her dress slid like oil, puddling on the floor.  “I don’t take orders about the men I see.  But we’re going to have some new rules.  Rule number one is, you don’t bring _him_ up anymore.  Rule number two is you tell _no one_ about this.  Not your neighbors, not your landlady, not a stray cat on the street.”  Shae’s eyes passed over the bruises on his stomach, but this time she asked no questions.

Thin fingers twined through his curls as he knelt at the base of his bed.  “You love him,” he accused, before his tongue found her clit, teasing a whine from her lips.

“If you think that, you know less about me than I thought.  I love no one.”

“Perhaps not as a woman loves a man,” Ben allowed.  There was too much of himself in Shae for that, he knew that.  “But you love him.”

“He’s going to bring peace to the lower east side,” her words came out between gasps as he worked furiously at her cunt, “He saved me.”

“From what?  Surely you’d rather be a wh-”

Shae’s legs clenched around his neck, sealing his words.  “How do you think I pay for my clothes, Ben-ski, for my hats, for my shoes.  That’s not what he saved me from.  He saved me from a life without meaning, without purpose.  This conversation is over.”  Her grip loosened, and Ben resumed his task.

“You’re a fool to love him,“ he whispered to the folds of her cunt, but she couldn’t hear him through her sighs.

\--

The purpling on her wrist was almost faded enough that an average man wouldn’t notice it, but his eyes were better trained, and he was anything but average.  “What’s that,” he accused, holding her wrist aways from his face, peering at the dark rings through fogged glass.  “Who did that to you?”

Shae shook her head.  “Ben, it’s fine.  Don’t worry about it.”  Her thighs clenched around him, her kisses urging him back to their task, but he slid out from under her, cleaning his glasses inefficiently on the sweat-matted sheets.

“It’s not fine.  Did Dondarrion do this?”

Shae snatched her hand back, her eyes filled with righteous anger.  “Ben-”

“Veniamin,” he said impatiently.

“What?”

“It’s not Ben.  That’s not my name.  Call me Veniamin.”

Curiosity cut through her anger.  “Veniamin.”  The word was queer on her now-pursed lips, and so he opened them again with a kiss.

“Veen,” his lips traced her jaw, “EE,” they found the hollow of her throat, “a” his teeth scraped her collarbone, “min,” and closed around the bruising of her wrist.

“Veniamin.  Don’t.  I told you that subject is not for you to discuss.”  She paused, her dark eyes meeting his glass armored ones.  This is how their game worked.  He gave her something, and she gave something back.  Shae knew it as well as he did.  He could feel the bones of the bed frame through the thin mattress, worrying lines into his knees.  “He worries about me.  He just grabbed me a little too hard, all right?  I can take care of myself.”

Veniamin shook his head.  It was as he thought; she was still a fool.

\--

“Come to my apartment. Stop. I know you know where it is. Stop.  Soon as you can.  Stop.”  Veniamin repeated the words of the telegram over and over as he he climbed the five floors to Shae’s tenement room.  Her lock was shabby, but her bed was plush; its mattress rose a foot above the iron frame, and she sat crumpled upon it.

Shae looked so small suddenly, her shoulders caving in, her body so tiny, even in this one room.  There were bloodstains on her pale blue dress, and Veniamin found himself kneeling at her feet.  “Shae,” he barked, “Shae, whose blood is this?  Shae!”

Her head snapped up, her wrists shaking against thin knees.  “His.   _Beric’s_.”  She spit the word out, and Veniamin felt himself buoyed by it.  “I held out my knife and he grabbed it from me.  He told me I ought to have stuck it in him instead.  He was right.”  Veniamin heard _you were right._

“What did he do to you?”

“Nothing,” her laugh shook flakes of dried blood from her ribcage, dirty red-brown dust swirling in the air.  “He did nothing.  That’s why he was so angry.  He wanted to know why I would fuck you, and not him.  Asked if it was him who was the villain, would I get on my knees.  He kissed me.”  Shae shuddered, and Veniamin felt his fists clench.

“We’ll kill him, would you like that?”

Shae shook her head.  “He’s not my hero anymore, but he’s still theirs.  I can’t take that from the boys.  They need him.  I don’t.  I don’t need anyone.”

Veniamin nodded.  “Good.” He pressed a kiss to the bloodied skin of her wrist.  “Good.”

There was new fury in her as she fucked him into her sheets, his back stained bloody by her red dripped talons, the sweat stinging in the torn skin, leaving streaks across her clean sheets.

“Come again tomorrow,” she murmured, her flask shining mirror bright as she poured back moonshine, “Past twelve.  I’ll be waiting.”

\--

His tongue was dry and stuck and unstuck to the roof of his mouth as Veniamin stared down the doors of Beric’s hidden hall.  He knew he was no longer welcome there, but he also knew he had nowhere else to go.  Shae’s note was damp between his sweating hands. _V, if you get this I’m in the lion’s den.  Tell daddy I’ll forgive him if he gets me free.  –S_

He’d picked the lock at her place when she didn’t answer the door, found the paper crumpled on the sheets.  It was in her hand, but it was all he knew.  They could have her anywhere in the city, anywhere at all.  Veniamin didn’t have the power or the resources--no.  It was useless.

Whatever had happened, it was clear the Lannisters had her somehow, and if she was in enough danger to ask for Dondarrion’s help, then he would make sure she got it.  This was Dondarrion’s fault after all, that she was imprisoned, that she was in danger.  A lone, black prostitute meant nothing to the City of New York.  Only Veniamin cared.  And Beric Dondarrion, if he could make him. The man thought himself a messiah, well here was time to prove his famous compassion.

“Ben!” Anguy’s friendly voice cut through the darkness as Veniamin snuck through the secret doorway.  “You’re not supposed to come round here anymore.”  As always, Anguy was friendly, despite the fact that more often than not Veniamin had found himself at the butt end of Anguy’s gun.

“I need to see Dondarrion.  It’s… It’s Shae.  The Lannisters-“

“Have her.  We know.  Sorry to break it to you, but there’s nothing we can do.  Dondarrion and her must have had some kind of fight, not that he told us about it, of course, but he’s been in one of his dark moods.  And it doesn’t take an idiot to see the cuts on his hands, or hear the screams from the back as Thoros sewed him up.  Whiskey stings over an open wound.”

Veniamin nodded.  It was as he expected.  Dondarrion was a coward who wouldn’t tell them what he did to Shae.  “This is his fault, he has to get her back.”

Anguy shook his head.  “You’re not listening to me, he _can’t._  We have a truce with the Lannisters, and we can’t break it.  Shae wasn’t technically one of ours anymore when they took her… We can’t break the truce for nothing.  It would incite a war the likes of which this city’s never seen.  She’s a tough bird, she’ll make it through.”

“You stupid, cowardly—“ Veniamin pulled the pistol from his hip holster, but Anguy was faster, his tommy gun coming out from behind the bar with a flourish.

“I’m gonna stop you right there.  Don’t do anything you’ll regret now.  Shae’s just a bird like any other.”  Anguy sighed.  “You know, I like you, Ben.  You’re a decent guy.  And it’s because I like you that I shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m gonna.  If you’re looking for him, Dondarrion, you’ll find him at the Trinity Church by the South Street Seaport.  There’s a cemetery there, he’ll be by the graves near the iron fence.”

The pistol was cold, pulling up his shirt as it slid back against his holster, icy metal against his sweating skin, and Veniamin turned, leaving without a word.

\--

“Ben.” Dondarrion’s voice was a cold whisper against the dark of the night as he knelt in front of a pair of twin graves.  Veniamin could just make out the engravings in the dim.   _Dondarrion_ , they said.  His parents, evidently.  “You shouldn’t have come here.”

The barrel of Ben’s gun stretched out into the darkness.  “You have to save her.”

His laugh was deep and it shook the night, chased the shadows of the gravestones around them.  Veniamin shivered.  After sending so many to the ground, it was no wonder their spirits hated him.  Hard as he tried, Veniamin never could shake the ghosts in a graveyard.  They clung to his skin, making it clammy, pressing against his thin chest to speed the beat of his heart.

“You know nothing about her,” Dondarrion spoke to the graves, but not to Veniamin, wouldn’t even turn and look at his accuser, his would-be assassin.  “You’ve known her what, a month?  Two?  She’s been mine for years.”

“It’s you that doesn’t know her.  You think she’s your little angel?  Maybe she hasn’t told you then, about the men she’s killed, about the lives she’s ruined, the way she toys with men for fun.”

Dondarrion only shook his head.  “That was before she had purpose, cause, that was before she had me.”

It was remarkable, how Dondarrion could be so blind.  Veniamin’s fingers trembled against the trigger.  “Save her, or I’ll kill you.  I know a thousand ways I could with my bare hands.”

Dondarrion never even turned around.  “I only need say the word, and you’d be dead where you stand.  My man, Jack, has the barrel of his gun pressed out the window of that church.  You think you’re powerful because you hold a gun?  You know _nothing_ of power.”

“If you’re so powerful why won’t you _do_ anything!”

The back of a gun connected with Veniamin’s skull, sending him reeling into the dirt, the souls below embracing him as he faded out of consciousness.  “She’s lost to me, Ben.  To you, too.  Let her go, or the next time I see you, I’ll kill you.”

\--

The note found him lying sleepless on his bed, images of Shae’s fate running like a newsreel through his mind.  Veniamin flew from his tenement up the streets of the city, his feet slapping against the pavement as the blocks flew by.  One mile, and then another.  The walk was long, but it passed in a daze.

What state would he find her in?  How would she appear?  It could be a trap, of course.  Dondarrion could have set him up.  And yet, somehow, from the depths of him, Veniamin found the will to hope.  Shae was a survivor.  She was like him, if not as good, not as sharp, not as focused.  There was a chance she could be alive.

Alive she was, laid out flat on a velvet chaise, her white dress stark against her paling skin.  “Veniamin.” As always, his name was somewhat mangled on her lips, but he smiled all the same.  “You look shocked to see me.  Don’t you know by now, I always pull through.”

He nodded as he nudged her legs aside, sitting beside her on the heavy fabric.  Lightly, she rolled over.  Her dress was open in the back, and he could see the new scars and open wounds that crisscrossed her back.  “Get my flask from the table, I need you to clean it.”

Obeying her, as he frequently found himself doing, Veniamin grabbed the flask and sat back down.  “Careful, knyazhna, this will sting.”

Sting it did, and her screams pulled raw from her throat.  Lightly, he used his own shirttails to wipe the blood and alcohol away.  “Who saved you—was it, was it Dondarrion?”

Shae shook her head, turning back to look at him.  “I’m in Lannister territory still.  It seemed while the elders, the twins, though taking me would hurt Beric, Tyrion wanted me for himself.  He swept me from their torturer’s grasp and away to this place.  It’s much nicer than my own.”

Veniamin shook his head.  “I don’t understand.  Why torture you?”

“For Beric’s secrets, of course.  I gave them none.  He may have betrayed me but I am stronger than that.”  She took Veniamin’s hand between her own and dragged it up the smooth skin of her thigh, but he drew it back.  “What, don’t you want to?”

Of course he wanted to.  Even with her bloodless and weak, he could think of nothing but her fingers clasped around a leather belt, whipping him senseless, the way her skin tasted of salt when he fucked her, and her hair stuck to her cheeks.  “You’re too weak knyazhna, you’ll fall apart.  I don’t want you when you’re broken and bleeding.  It’s disgusting.  Call for me once you’re well.”

She only laughed at that.  “You always want me.”

\--

They eased back into their old routine, only now it was Veniamin coming and going, sneaking through the creaking doors by the daylight hours.  The nighttime was when Tyrion reigned, and it was an odd shift for Veniamin, to be out so frequently when the shadows were short and the sun was high.  But it’s when she could see him, so it was when he came, the sun covering him in dew, sticking his cheap suits to his pale skin.

He found a strange sort of peace beneath her painful ministrations.  There was something strangely encouraging about the way Shae could dole out lashes as her own wounds seared and reopened on her mottled back.

“Veniamin,” she’d purr through slick wet gasps, and he’d find himself smiling through the pain.  “Now.”

Her commands were hard to ignore with her long legs wrapped around him and her cunt pulling at him.  Her cruelty elevated her, it matched her smile and the shimmer of her dresses, made her better, made her more like him.

“Now.”

He’d come with ragged gasps, and the white of her teeth would show through her lips as she stole a kiss from his bruising lips.

“Good boy.”

\--

The apartment was empty, shadows growing and flickering along the floorboards as Veniamin swept through it, looking for signs of Shae.

“What I don’t understand,” a voice spoke from a velvet armchair in the corner.  It’s speaker was small enough that Veniamin hadn’t noticed him sitting there, waiting in the dark.   _Tyrion_.  “Is why you?  I’ve been indulgent, you know.  Allowed her many things.  Fine fashion, beautiful jewels, anything she wished for, I’ve given her.  I asked of her only one thing, be faithful to me alone.  And yet, she chose to see _you,_ behind my back.  You’re nothing.  Some poor, foreign, Ruski with no name and no family to speak of.  So why you?”

Veniamin turned, grateful for the shadows that surrounded them, clinging to him like a cloak.  It  was the shadows he knew, the shadows that were his home long before he came to this city.  “I know Shae.  I understand her.  She’s smart.  Far smarter than you.  Almost as smart as me.”

Tyrion shook his head, pulling the chain next to the chair, the one that lit up a bulb above his head, crowning his golden hair like a halo.  “She has you fooled then.  She’s nothing but a woman, a whore like the rest of them.  Shae’s an innocent, little more than a girl.  Beric Dondarrion swept her up once into his web, but I saved her.  From him, from my sister, I _saved_ her.  All you’ve done is tempt her away.”

A laugh pulled from Veniamin’s throat as he stalked round the ring of light.  How could she be innocent, and a whore both?  The monster before him was full of contradictions, full of lies like any other man.  “You don’t know.  You can’t see.  You’re the one she needs saving from, you and Dondarrion both.”

“She doesn’t love you,” Tyrion said, “She loves _me._ ” 

Veniamin glared down at the imp, his ugly face mocked him as much as the velvet drapes.  They whispered _you don’t belong here._ His delicate features composed themselves into a equally mocking smile.  “Is that what you think?”  There was no jealousy there, not truly.  He didn’t care who else Shae fucked, but it’s funny, to think that this little man would think that Shae could love him.  “Then you don’t know her at all.  She loves no one but herself, and her finery, and a comfortable bed.”

Tyrion frowned.  “She loves me.”  It was clear it was himself he meant to convince, and apparently, it worked.  “She loves me.”  The second iteration had more confidence in it, but still it was ridiculous.  “In any case, it’s none of your concern.  That’s not why I’m here.  That’s not why you’re here.  You see, I’ve looked into you.  Beric Dondarrion thought you belonged to no one when he picked you up off the streets, oh yes, I did my research, but he’s a trusting man.  Trusts the _government_ , of all things.  I looked beyond your little trip through Ellis Island.  I know all about the _Lord of Light._ ”

Veniamin shivered, then sneered.  It was no matter what he knew, Tyrion held no power over him.  He could kill Tyrion for so much as breathing that name, and he would, but before he could reach for his gun Tyrion held up a plain cream card, red lettering visible, embossed against the woven paper.  Veniamin didn’t have to be close enough to read it to know what it said.  “I’ve hired you, you see.  Next week, just past midnight, at the Plaza Hotel, the presidential suite, you’re going to kill my father.”

\--

The orders were simple.  Kill Tywin Lannister and whomever was with him.  Make it messy.  Not like a mob hit, like an assassination.  Like a murder.  It’s his pistol he takes with him, the one he brought from Russia, tucked into its holster, bumping against his thin thighs as he sneaks in the server’s entrance.  Presidential suite is all the way up, but they don’t let ruski waiters use their fancy elevators.  Perhaps there was a service one, but he doesn’t know the way.

Each step Veniamin climbs stings in his thighs, in his stomach, until he’s panting.  His gun is slick in his sweat-clung hands, but the door swings open easy beneath his key.  The great man Tywin Lannister is sitting on his porcelain throne, never expecting the gunshot through his belly.  Blood pools on the white marble, dripping down the tiles, his naked form frozen in shock.

It’s not until he hears the screech behind him that Veniamin realizes Tywin hadn’t been alone.

He knew her voice even before he turned.  He’d heard that scream before.

“You.”  The barrel of his gun was still warm, but it wasn’t sweat that was making its handle shake.  Shae took two steps back and tripped, falling on the bed.  There was nothing enticing about her naked body now, all it showed was his own weakness.  Veniamin could see the scars that hugged her spine, curling around her dark hips, could feel the fear that clung to her heavy breaths.

“Ben, you don’t have to do this,” he could hear her muffled begging against the thick pillows beneath her.  The barrel of his gun trembled against the back of her head.  Veniamin knew the cost of walking away, but he wouldn’t.  He couldn’t.  He sold himself long before she came along.

Veniamin’s long fingers traced the white lines along her ribs, his own breath catching against her ear.  She twisted beneath him, her dark eyes meeting his.  He could see himself reflected in them, looming above her, long and obscured.

“Veniamin, _please_.”

The barrel of his gun dripped scarlet with her blood.

\--

The door flew open like a gunshot (like _the_ gunshot, the one he heard over and over again, saw her body crumple, saw the blood burst from her temple crowning her dark hair red like her dress, like his curtains, like his own mangled feet on the white Russian snow).

“You knew.”

“I suspected, that’s different.  In either case, the territory is mine, now.  My fool of a brother and whore of a sister will be falling over themselves trying to see who killed father, and me, why I’m small enough to crawl through the rubble unscathed.”

Veniamin lowered his gun to the imp’s forehead, pressed it against the very same spot that grew the dressing adorning Shae’s dark curls.  “Why?  Why have _me_ kill her?  You loved her!”

“And you don’t?”

“No.  Love is for fools.  Love is for the weak.  Love is for lesser beings.  I know that.  She _knew_ that.”

Tyrion shrugged.  “She betrayed me.  She was sleeping with my _father_.  I loved her, and she fucked him.  I needed to know for sure, if it was true, the poison Cersei whispered in my ears.  I know now that it was.  Don’t you worry, they’ll die for it to.”

The barrel of Veniamin’s gun trembled against the imp’s scarred face.  “How can you be so calm when you’re about to die?  She wasn’t calm.  She _begged_.  Now you, you do the same.  Get on your knees, _dwarf_.”

It was Tyrion who laughed this time.  “I won’t.  You see, I know something you don’t.”

The clock in the lion’s mouth ticked loudly by, one second, and then another, until Veniamin couldn’t take it anymore.  “What!  What is it that you know?”

“I know that Beric Dondarrion knows who killed her.  And I know that he knows where you are, right now.  It was me that told him, you see, how you murdered her and the great Tywin Lannister both in a fit of jealous rage.  We’ll bring peace to the East Side, together, him with his territory, me with mine.  He’s really a reasonable man, once you get to know him.  Ah, and here he is, right on time.”

The butt of a gun hit Veniamin on the side of the head before he could fire his own.  His pistol, still wet with Shae’s blood, discharged into the armchair as it flew out of his hands.

“Ben.”  Veniamin looked up at Beric Dondarrion, whose face was looming closer and closer to Veniamin’s own as he stooped down beside him.

Veniamin spit blood between his teeth, a glob landing neatly in the center of Beric’s forehead.  Beric’s laugh was cruel as he took out a handkerchief and neatly wiped it away.  “Vulgar until the very end.”  He reached out an arm.  “Anguy, a gun.”

The barrel suspended over his eyes was his own.  He could see a drop of Shae’s blood dancing on the cool metal, a bright red bead in a sea of black.  “Do it,” Veniamin spit, “stop wasting time.”

A white smile behind the scarlet drop and a light click, then nothing more.


End file.
